It may also appear as an English reduced form of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic derived McCarter or the Scottish-Gaelic Mac Artair with Mc meaning "son of."
[2][3] The name is also related to the Latin carettarius meaning "cart driver" which was influenced by Celtic terminology and evolved into Norman French as "caretier."
In England, the earliest recorded use of the surname Carter dates back to 1192–1193, as evidenced by the entry of Norman knight Rannulf le Caretier in the Pipe Rolls of Huntingdonshire.
In Ireland it is ranked between McGarry and Cannon where it is found with greatest frequency in County Laois as the 70th most common surname and also has significant presence in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick.
[6] The Carter surname was forced upon African Americans as formerly enslaved people lost their family names long before the Emancipation and 13th Amendment to their masters (who were typically of English or Scottish descent), or through the common mixing found between Irish immigrants and free African Americans in Northern cities and communities such as Five Points and Seneca Village in New York City and elsewhere in the United States.